Experts State That Insider Threat Could Be The Biggest Risk You Face This Year, But What Does That Actually Mean?

If you look solely for outside threats to your business, then you’re only seeing half of the picture. External risks like ransomware and phishing pose no more of a threat to operations than so-called ‘insider threats’, which can see entire data sets laid bare.

Worse, there’s clear evidence that insider threats are on the rise in roughly 42% of countries. Unsurprisingly, then, experts are classifying insider threat as one of the biggest risks businesses are facing this year.

Here, we’ll consider what insider threats actually mean, and what you can do about them in 2026.

Defining Insider Threat

Insider threat effectively means any internal risk factors, which can be most easily broken down into –

• Malicious: When a person actively tries to cause harm for reasons that might include revenge or financial gain.
• Negligent: Unintentional security risks that arise through carelessness or poor judgment.

Let’s Look at the Numbers

As mentioned, insider threats are growing. In fact, average organisations can now experience as many as six insider threats every month, and that figure is set to increase.

This is particularly concerning considering that insider threats are notoriously difficult to spot, as agreed by the 90% of security professionals. This is especially true in light of recent advancements that include hybrid work and BYoD policies. You’re not looking for a bug when you’re dealing with threats like these – you’re searching for a literal needle in your business haystack.

The Real Reason Insider Threat is Set to Grow

As mentioned, trends like hybrid working have made it far harder to pin down internal threats of any kind. Worse, average cybersecurity software is generally concerned with external threats. The result? Insider threats may be left unchecked until they’ve already taken a significant toll.

It’s also worth stating that actively malicious internal threats are now on a par with negligence as a risk factor. In other words, employees are angry, and with an entire data stratosphere at their fingertips, there’s now an easy way to make that anger known.

Finding a Way Forward

There’s no denying that you need to factor for insider threats within your security infrastructure this year, but how exactly can you do that?

Ultimately, these precautions should begin at the employment stage. Carefully vetting recruits using tools like this identity lookup API ensures that you gain a complete and honest history, which can easily flag fraud or questionable past behaviour long before a malicious player comes on board.

But how do you prevent a good employee from going bad? You can’t, but experts state that adaptable control and adjustable protections are key, especially when it comes to offboarding. You need to know what information your employees are accessing, and what they’re doing with it, to ensure that you can respond to insider threats in real-time, just like you would to an outside scam risk.

Insider threats are here to stay in 2026. Make sure your data doesn’t come under fire as a result by using these top tips.